In many countries' curricula, social studies is the combined study of humanities, the arts, and social sciences, mainly including history, economics, and civics. The term was first coined by American educators around the turn of the twentieth century as a catch-all for these subjects, as well as others which did not fit into the models of lower education in the United States such as philosophy and psychology. One of the purposes of social studies, particularly at the level of higher education, is to integrate several disciplines, with their unique methodologies and special focuses of concentration, into a coherent field of subject areas that communicate with each other by sharing different academic "tools" and perspectives for deeper analysis of social problems and issues. Social studies aims to train students for informed, responsible participation in a diverse democratic society. The content of social studies provides the necessary background knowledge in order to develop values and reasoned opinions, and the objective of the field is civic competence. A related term is humanities, arts, and social sciences, abbreviated HASS.
Lawrence Henry Summers is an American economist who served as the 71st United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 and as director of the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010. He also served as president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006, where he is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School. In November 2023, Summers joined the board of directors of artificial general intelligence company OpenAI.
Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), officially the John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the school of public policy and government of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school offers master's degrees in public policy, public administration, and international development, four doctoral degrees, and various executive education programs. It conducts research in subjects relating to politics, government, international affairs, and economics. As of 2021, HKS had an endowment of $1.7 billion. It is a member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA), a global consortium of schools that trains leaders in international affairs.
Paul Marlor Sweezy was a Marxist economist, political activist, publisher, and founding editor of the long-running magazine Monthly Review. He is best remembered for his contributions to economic theory as one of the leading Marxian economists of the second half of the 20th century.
The University of Chicago Law School is the law school of the University of Chicago, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It employs more than 180 full-time and part-time faculty and hosts more than 600 students in its Juris Doctor program, while also offering the Master of Laws, Master of Studies in Law and Doctor of Juridical Science degrees in law.
Nicholas Gregory Mankiw is an American macroeconomist who is currently the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Mankiw is best known in academia for his work on New Keynesian economics.
The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. The school grew out of the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers, the nation's first graduate training program in population health, which was founded in 1913 and then became the Harvard School of Public Health in 1922.
Roland Gerhard Fryer Jr. is an American economist and professor at Harvard University. Following a difficult childhood, Fryer earned an athletic scholarship to the University of Texas at Arlington, but once there chose to concentrate instead on academics. Graduating cum laude in 2+1⁄2 years, he went on to receive a Ph.D. in economics from Pennsylvania State University in 2002 and completed postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago with Gary Becker. He joined the faculty of Harvard University and rapidly rose through the academic ranks; in 2007, at age 30, he became the second-youngest professor, and the youngest African American, ever to be awarded tenure at Harvard. He has received numerous awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 2011 and the John Bates Clark Medal in 2015.
The School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) is the international affairs and public policy school of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university located in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York City. SIPA offers Master of International Affairs (MIA) and Master of Public Administration (MPA) degrees in a range of fields, as well as the Executive MPA and PhD program in Sustainable Development.
The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy is the public policy school of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is located on the University of Chicago's main campus in Hyde Park. The school's namesake is businessman Irving B. Harris, who made a donation that established the Harris School in 1986. In addition to policy studies and policy analysis, the school requires its students to pursue training in economics and statistics through preliminary examinations and course requirements. Harris Public Policy offers joint degrees with the Booth School of Business, Law School, School of Social Service Administration, and the Graduate Division of the Social Sciences.
The MIT Department of Economics is a department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Dennis Frank Thompson is a political scientist and professor at Harvard University, where he founded the university-wide Center for Ethics and the Professions. Thompson is known for his pioneering work in the fields of both political ethics and democratic theory. According to a recent appraisal, he has become “influential within the world of political theory" by offering “greater concrete political thought than Rawls” and by showing “an atypical grasp, for a political theorist, of the real political world.”
Eric Stark Maskin is an American economist and mathematician. He was jointly awarded the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Leonid Hurwicz and Roger Myerson "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory". He is the Adams University Professor and Professor of Economics and Mathematics at Harvard University.
Quincy House is one of twelve undergraduate residential Houses at Harvard University, located on Plympton Street between Harvard Yard and the Charles River. The second largest of the twelve undergraduate houses, Quincy House was named after Josiah Quincy III (1772–1864), president of Harvard from 1829 to 1845. Quincy House's official counterpart at Yale University is Branford College.
Cecilia Elena Rouse is an American economist and the President of the Brookings Institution. She served as the 30th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers between 2021 and 2023. She is the first Black American to hold this position. Prior to this, she served as the dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Joe Biden nominated Rouse to be Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in November 2020. Rouse was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate on March 2, 2021, by a vote of 95–4. She resigned on March 31, 2023 to return to teaching. On June 28, she was named the 9th President of the Brookings Institution.
Dwight Heald Perkins II is an American academic, economist, Sinologist and professor at Harvard University. He is the son of Lawrence Bradford Perkins, architect, and Margery Blair Perkins and the grandson of Dwight Heald Perkins, the architect. He married Julie Rate Perkins in 1957 and they have three adult children.
Holden Karnofsky is an American nonprofit executive. He is a co-founder and Director of AI Strategy of the research and grantmaking organization Open Philanthropy. Karnofsky co-founded the charity evaluator GiveWell with Elie Hassenfeld in 2007 and is vice chair of its board of directors.
The Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics is a research center at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The center's mission is to "advance teaching and research on ethical issues in public life." It is named for Edmond J. Safra and Lily Safra and receives support from the Edmond J. Safra Foundation. The Center for Ethics was the first Interfaculty Initiative at Harvard University.
Claudine Gay is an American political scientist and academic administrator who is the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University. Gay's research addresses American political behavior, including voter turnout and politics of race and identity.
Willene A. Johnson is an American economist who is a former vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, former U.S. Executive Director of the African Development Bank, and a former president of the National Economic Association.